The producers were delighted, the parents were nervous, and when she was alone with Tom, Mary was unsparing.
'It's a freak show now,' she said. 'Maybe it always was, but now? There's no history here. There isn't even any sense any more. There's just brightly-coloured pop culture and dumb nostalgia. It's bullshit.'
She wasn't the only one to hold the opinion. While the controversy kept the viewing figures buoyant throughout the run of the series, the broadsheet reactions were increasingly damming.
'A contrived fairground spectacle,' one commentator described it in The Telegraph, 'hamstrung by an increasing desperation to show us things we already know.'
'What began as an interesting social experiment has deteriorated into morbid sensationalism,' said another in The Times.
Close to the end of the series, during the feature length episode that afforded the producers yet another excuse to broadcast the 1966 World Cup match, Mary left. She packed up her bags with her new 1960s wardrobe and waited until she was sure the cameras were filming before she screamed at her parents for the best part of half an hour. The episode was supposed to have been about football, about England's win against Germany, but instead the game played on in the background, the cheers and commentary of the bottle-screened television repurposed with a grim irony for the fireworks centre stage.
Later, Mary found Tom and held him silently while he pleaded with her not to leave him on his own. And when the cameras stopped filming, she set him back down again and smiled as though the tears had never been there at all.
'Buck up, kiddo,' she said. 'It's only television.'
Late in the year, Tom received a letter from Mary. The postmark was from Quiberon in Brittany and the stamp showed a seabird in flight. She didn't include a forwarding address.
'Dear Tommy,' Mary's letter began. 'It's such a strange looking world from the outside, that when I say it's too easy to lose track of time, I wonder if you know what I mean. Remember when the production company flew us out to France that year for the Reality Television Festival in Cannes? It's like you've spent the best part of your life on one of those moving walkways at the airport, and then suddenly find yourself thrown off at the end. All of a sudden, I am mundane again. Time moves for me like it does for everyone else and for once in my life, I'm thankful for it.
'It's frightening in a way. Outside, everyone knows us. Everybody thinks they know us. But that's all bullshit. The version of me they think they know is, I hope, not the version of me you do.'
She signed off with her initials, and she punctuated them with a hasty X that looked stark and inadequate at the bottom of the page.
*
At the end of the corridor in the bed and breakfast on Burton Stone Lane, there was a nightclub. A second, red-velvet curtain concealed a second square archway, and behind it was a small auditorium. A windowless room that looked a little like something out of a 1920s gangster movie, right down to the miasma of tobacco smoke hanging just below the ceiling.
A few steps led down to a lacquered floor, where a number of small, round tables were arranged, each accompanied by wiry chairs. There were only a handful of people present, and they each sat in silence, nursing their drinks and smoking. A candle and an ash tray were set on each table, and all faced a stage set beneath a square proscenium arch in the far wall. The stage was arranged as though a performance was in hiatus: music stands were positioned in a semi-circle around old-fashioned microphone stands and behind each, Tom could see unattended musical instruments were propped, waiting. The band themselves were nowhere to be seen, but the music played on, the sound coming from a small old-fashioned gramophone, set on a stool at the front of the stage, its elegant amplifier horn aimed into the auditorium.
'Do you have a reservation?'
A woman stood beside him, dressed in a snug-fitting tuxedo. Her hair was a mass of bright blonde curls but her eyes were dark and her expression sour.
Tom grinned. He wanted to say something clever about the number of empty tables laid out, but he was starting to reconsider his earlier conviction that this was a hoax. It was simply far too elaborate to be anything other than real.
'I don't think so,' he said, hoping she might give him a clue.
The woman nodded.
'Follow me,' she said and started across the floor to an unoccupied table near the front.
Feeling extravagant, he ordered a glass of Talisker and the woman disappeared to the bar, returning with a tumbler on a tray.
'Cigarette?' The woman proffered an open case, cigarettes lined up like soldiers.
Tom hesitated.
'Isn't there a smoking ban?' he said.
'This is a private club,' the woman said.
Bobby had hated the smell of tobacco on him, but the idea struck Tom as oddly exhilarating. He took a cigarette from the proffered case, and leant forward while the woman lit it for him. It tasted harsh, but he swallowed his cough before he embarrassed himself.
'When does it start?' His eyes watered as he nodded at the stage.
The woman folded the case away and shot him a curious look.
'When everyone's here,' she said.
Tom waited. No one else arrived, and the gramophone continued to play unaccompanied.
As his eyes adjusted to the light in the room, he could make out the other clientele more clearly. At least three of the other tables were occupied. A couple sat at one; the man slouching in his chair, the woman's hand resting on his knee. They stared at the stage, unmoving. A man sat alone at another table, his face a ball of wrinkles that caught the shadows in the room and made him look gaunt and thin.
The third table was occupied by a tall woman whom Tom judged to be in her fifties or perhaps older. Dressed in a red blouse and a long black skirt, she was an elegant looking sort, a cigarette lodged in a holder and propped between her long fingers. Unlike the others, she turned to meet his eyes and smiled at him. Then, in a move that made Tom almost choke on his own cigarette, she stood up and walked across the floor to his table, pulling up a chair and sitting down.
'I've not seen you here before,' she said.
Tom leant back a little, wary of the attention.
'First time,' he said.
'Well,' the woman smiled again, her teeth bright under the haze of lights, 'let's make it memorable enough that you come back.'
She summoned the waitress to the table and ordered more drinks, choosing a more expensive single malt than Tom would have chosen himself. The waitress opened her cigarette case again, but the woman in the red dress waved her away, producing a pack of her own from her handbag and offering one to Tom.
'I shouldn't,' Tom said.
The woman rolled her eyes.
'I'm not asking if you should,' she said.
Tom shrugged and took a cigarette.
'It feels a bit strange,' he said, borrowing her lighter rather than letting her light up for him. 'What with the ban—'
The woman snorted. She pushed a new cigarette into her holder and leaned in as Tom reached across to light her.
'This is how things used to be,' she said, leaning back again. 'This is how things should be. There was a time when we didn't need to be nursed like babies. A time when we were treated like adults. And sure, smoking might be bad for you – hell, so much in this world is bad for you they can't ban all of it. Back then, we had a choice. We all had a choice.'
She smiled and extended a hand, long bony fingers bunched together like a shark fin.
'Joan,' she said.
'Tom.'
Her grip was solid. Her skin warm and dry like parcel paper. She turned his hand over, tracing her thumb over the roots of his fingers as though she was looking for evidence of a ring.
'A pleasure,' she said.
Tom extricated his hand and set it on his lap, out of reach.
'I'm here with someone,' he said.
Joan smirked.
'Aren't we all, honey? Aren't we all?'
She took the lighter off him
and relit her cigarette, taking another drag.
Tom nodded to the stage.
'So who are we waiting for?' he said. He tried to be offhand about it, faintly embarrassed his ignorance would be exposed. But Joan didn't seem concerned; in fact her smile became dreamy at the thought.
'A great man,' she said. 'A great artist.'
She looked at him, her eyebrow arched.
'You listen to music?' she said.
He nodded.
'No,' she said, 'I mean do you listen to music? I'm not talking about your dance music, your rap, your drum and bass. I'm not talking about your modern rock or hip hop or whatever the noise of the moment calls itself. I mean real music. Music with a melody, songs with a purpose. Twin tools to get themselves inside of you and remake you bone-by-bone, every time you hear it.'
Tom smiled. 'I like music just fine,' he said.
'You like music?' she said. 'Have you heard of Nadine Burr?'
Tom shook his head.
'Louis Mendoza?'
'No.'
'Jackson Prentiss? Dewey Lanchester? Louise Aristoe?'
'No, sorry.'
'Maximillian MacConnell?'
'The landlord?'
Joan stared at him in disbelief, then laughed.
'Landlord?' she said. 'Oh, child. What have you done with your life?'
She shook her head and closed her eyes.
'When I was eight years old,' she said, 'I went to visit my uncle in Barnsley. My papa had just run off, and my mam was shopping us around looking for a place to hole up until things righted themselves. Now, Uncle Larry had himself no kids, no woman, not even a dog. But he did have a new record player and we spent the evening sitting around it working our way through this little snakeskin travelling case where he kept his records. And amongst them, he had this dusty vinyl LP. It had a plain paper sleeve, no picture. Nadine Burr Sings By Heart. My god, I had never heard anything like it. My god, I never believed in magic until that moment right there.'
Her eyes still closed, her head swayed as though she could hear it still.
'There was a group of them, I found out. Same label: Immortal Memories. Same thing, same magic. Nadine, Jackson, Max, and the others. They did things… their music… Back then, apparently, they used to play together. Can you imagine it? More than one, together! Oh, but you have to hear it yourself and then you'll understand.'
Her eyes opened and when she looked at him, her expression was weighed down with sadness.
'Only I'm guessing you never have,' she said. 'And I believe you. They're not easy to find now. Out of print. Most of the records were lost and they flat-out refused to let their work be demeaned by all this new technology. CDs! Digi-tal! As if some mass produced junk could do something so… individual, so personal, any justice at all. Music isn't ones and zeroes. Music is contours in a groove. Everyone else has been had, mark my words.'
Her hand reached out and took his again, her grip remarkably strong.
'But he's here. Maximillian MacConnell is here. And he will sing for us. In this room! Live! Can you imagine such a thing? Can you imagine how lucky we are?'
Her eyes were wide and wild and something about her expression made him glance across the room at the other tables. He saw something similar in each of the patrons: a hungry anticipation as they stared at the empty stage.
'Listen!' she said.
She closed her eyes and her head tipped back as though she was in ecstasy. She swayed a little, her mouth open in a wide, joyous smile.
'Listen,' she said again, and she started to sing along wordlessly, tapping her thin thumb against the meat of his hand.
But the music she sang, the beat she described was different to the reedy music coming from the record player on the stage. Hers was something more expansive, something richer, its rhythms complex and strange. Hers was something that brought her both tears and joy and it was clear then that she was listening to something that he could not hear himself.
Unsettled, he withdrew his hand from hers. Her eyes flicked open and her expression slackened to one of disappointment. Tom took the opportunity to push himself to his feet.
'I think I'd better go,' he said. 'I don't really think this is my kind of thing.'
'I guess it was before your time,' she said.
'You'd be surprised,' Tom said.
She didn't say anything else. He lingered there awkward for a moment, but had nothing else to say. She let him walk away, her attention captured again by the stage.
Walking away proved more challenging than Tom expected. He felt absurdly drunk, more so than he had any reason to be. The fog of smoke seemed to thicken, while the floor felt soft underfoot and the room pitched like it was on a cruise ship. He grabbed a chair for support and it felt too light, too papery to hold anyone, so he dropped it, letting it clatter loudly as though he'd misjudged it.
The music from the gramophone player lifted in volume, and for a moment, he imagined it was pursuing him, trying to cut him off before he could make his escape. The waitress was nowhere to be seen, so he left a handful of notes on the bar and when he reached the doorway, he imagined the fresh air outside and it drove him onwards and through the curtain.
In the corridor, he lifted the curtain once more to see that clientele hadn't moved since he'd arrived. Joan, still sitting at the table he had left, stared at the stage, smoking in silence, a tense expression on her face.
He let the fabric fall and backtracked up the corridor a few paces. He felt nauseous; unsettled in a way he hadn't done since he'd been a child, overcome with a sense of heavy and appalling expectation that something terrible was going to happen. It was an inexplicable feeling, one that should have driven him away at a run, but nevertheless, he stopped to collect himself, as though he could face down his panic and prove it foolish.
A cool, sobering current of air distracted him further, a thin draft that he traced to a discreet doorway set into the panelling of the corridor which he had overlooked on his way in. He glanced up the corridor to confirm he was alone, then pushed the door open.
The room was a small antechamber, lit by the blue-grey haze of a bank of monochrome monitors stacked in a grid on the far wall. The setup was resolutely non-contemporary, a matrix of old, hooded cathode ray tubes, controlled with physical dials and throw switches. Even compared with the studied decor of the club he had just left, they still appeared dated and anachronistic.
Tom hadn't seen any cameras in the club, but it was clear there must have been at least one trained on each of the tables, as well as others recording the stage and a couple on the bar. He could see the shape of Joan, degraded to a crowd of white noise sitting at the table. From his privileged perspective, she seemed less detailed and more desperate.
In the middle of the room stood Max, his back to the door. He was staring at the screens, his shoulders were hunched, his arms slack at his sides, his legs apart as though bracing himself for impact. He wore nothing except for his wristwatch, and the light from the screens made his pale flesh glow with a flickering grey halo. He didn't move, he didn't speak, and if he knew Tom was there, he made no obvious indication. He just stared at the monitors as though he was waiting for something very specific to occur.
Tom stepped backwards, pulling the door closed behind him. He backed down the corridor until the door was out of sight, and only then did he start to run.
*
Two things happened in the 1970s that set Family Time on its final, fatal course. The first was that Mary, having not returned home during the course of the following six months, was replaced by an actress. Jessica Pilcrow was 21 and took the role of cousin Janey whom everyone pretended had come to stay in the family house for reasons no one bothered to fully imagine. Susan was blonder and slimmer than Mary had ever been, and while the tabloids continued to take an interest, it was mostly expressed in archive pictures of her previous performance work, not all of which was suitable for a family audience.
The second event followed a pa
y dispute with the crew, inadvertently mirroring the episodes dealing with the General Strike of the late Seventies. After one particular round of negotiations broke down, one of the technical staff leaked the news that throughout the past two series, Tom's mother had refused to stay in the same house as her husband, and spent each night in a hotel instead. She'd split up with him during the 1940s after discovering he'd had a brief affair with a young ARP warden in the partially constructed Anderson shelter.
James Kavanagh had done this before. Penny was his second wife, although she didn't know that until their wedding had been planned. Marriage number one hadn't lasted long, and there'd been no kids to stretch it further. In a sense, James was simply trying to rewrite his own history in a more favourable light, but that too had failed, even if Penny was happy to hide that fact from the viewing public.
As one newspaper put it, the family was now as fake as the history the series purported to follow.
More crucially, it was the first Tom had heard of the split. Both his parents had come to act towards him as they did in front of the cameras and it was only with the benefit of hindsight that he realised they rarely seemed to be in the same room at the same time. Whatever happened between them was strictly off-camera, it wasn't recorded, and therefore perhaps it didn't really happen at all. He imagined the world off-screen as a void, a green room where his parents sat silently apart waiting for their next cues.
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